Halo 2: The Covenant
by night hal 1
Summary: My book version of the Bungie developed game: Halo 2. It clears all the in-game moments, and some not seen. Based on a teen rated game.


Halo 2

______________The Covenant_____________

**Prologue**

**1037 hours, September 14, 2552 (revised date, Military Calendar) \ Aboard Longsword from vessel Gettysburg, 12 light-years away from rubble of Covenant battle station **_**Unyielding Hierophant**_

"Look out!" Cortana screamed, as the Master Chief narrowly missed a plasma torpedo by doing a barrel roll. That torpedo would be back; they locked on to their prey, and wouldn't stop until it hit something solid. John thought he heard Johnson puking in the back, but dismissed it in his mind.

"Hold on," the Master Chief said to his passenger, as he swerved through the enemy Seraphs that were assaulting the Gettysburg. It had made too far now to be stopped by the two covenant frigates that appeared out of slipstream, minutes before. So the Chief and his remaining Spartan-II squad mates were sent out to destroy them somehow.

The Chief had an idea.

"_You're closing in on the first target,"_ Will said over SQUADCOM 7, "_get in there and find a way to disable and or destroy it, over."_

"Copy that," John said via his helmet COM-link.

"_This is Blue-2,"_ Linda said over the COM, "_Blue-4 and I are harassing target two, awaiting orders sir, over."_

"Get inside the ship and find a weak point or," Cortana paused"something." She closed the frequency.

"Roger. Blue team, you heard the lady."

The Chief sped up faster towards the covenant threat. He dodged wave after wave of Seraphs and torpedoes. Finally, the plasma projectiles found their way back to his six. The Master Chief tried shaking them, no good.

"Cortana," he grunted in his throat mic," a little help here?"

"You might want to grab on to something, Chief," she replied.

"Nothing too fancy, maybe just a-"

The chief was cut short as Cortana brought their single ship fighter into a series of spins and loops, swerving into and out of the 9th wave of Seraphs.

He saw energy blips in his Longsword's radar, Seraphs exploding by the plasma torpedoes that had been following them. Suddenly, a flash erupted on his right wing. Had the plasma found its mark? No. It would have disintegrated their entire ship; a covenant fighter must have nicked their wing.

"Hang on!" Cortana yelled as she turned the ship into a ravine towards their targeted cruiser.

John heard Johnson screaming in the back, and replied to his yelling.

"Brace for impact!"

The Chief's Longsword kept spinning as it edged closer to the Covenant Cruiser, and finally crashed into their docking bay. The Chief's vision started to blur, and he dropped out of consciousness for a few moments.

Will sat in the captain's chair of the Gettysburg, all of the ship's terminal powers in his data-pad on the left hand of his captain's chair. He checked the Shawa-Fujikawa Slipspace engine, still cold, even after he tried warming it several times. If the UNSC didn't find them, or if they didn't find another slipspace generator, they were done for. Will slammed hi MJOLNIR armor gauntlet into the right arm rest of his seat, angry that after all they'd been through, they weren't going to make it back home. He forgot his wraith and found his hand to the COM station controls, and sent, again, his looped message:

"Any UNSC forces, please respond! Omega three channel! This is SPARTAN-043 in contact with three other remaining SPARTANS, a sergeant, and an AI that holds extremely valuable Intel! Any UNSC forces, please respond! Over!"

Will sat back in his chair, sighed, and clicked on the surveillance camera for the ship, and watched John and his friends make their way to their designated targets.

Will tried the slipspace generator again, and kept monitoring the COM E-band, searching, for anything.

The Master Chief opened his eyes, his vision was blurred. He blinked twice, and the haziness disappeared. He got up with a groan, and hefted a shotgun, and his MA5B assault rifle he always carried with him. He looked around the Longsword's cabin until he heard the screech of the aft compartment slide quickly open. Sergeant Johnson fell to the ground with an '_OOF!'_

"No, no. You didn't have to land this bird so gentle for _me_."

John handed the sergeant a SPARTAN laser, and hurried to the ship's bay door.

He heard Johnson sigh, "You shouldn't have. Hey; lock the door on your way out."

The Chief did just that. He punched the door's control panel, shutting it closed; but before it could even shut halfway, a hunter slammed its enormous shield down onto the door, bending it to an un-shutable point. The Master Chief rolled on the ground gaining distance form the hunter, while simultaneously reaching for his shotgun. The hunter looked to face John, and brought its shield to bear. It took the Chief four shots to finally get through a lucky round into the Hunter's exposed abdomen, killing it instantly; but the Chief always remembered a very helpful fact about hunters that most marines simply waved by:

Hunters traveled in pairs.

John reeled around facing his fallen target's bond brother, it lower its shield and knocked the Master Chief a full five yards away. As the Chief got his bearings, he heard a huff from the crashed Longsword. He looked up to see Johnson hefting the Spartan Laser that he had given him.

"Hey, big and ugly,"

The Hunter turned around to face him.

"Knock knock."

And with that Johnson fired a clear shot straight through the Hunter's abdomen, burning half the Hunter's body in a millisecond.

The hunter fell backwards onto the ground, smoke rising from its corpse. The sergeant walked out of the bay of the fighter, dropped the overheated Laser, and drew his pistol.

"I thought I asked you to lock the door Chief," he exclaimed as he put the last of his chewed cigar up to his lips.

"_This is Blue 2. Blue 4 and I have located the ship's life support systems, setting charges now. We just might beat your record Joh…Blue 1. Over"_

John winced at Linda's mistake before she quickly checked herself. Forgiving her fault, he keyed his throat mic.

"Cortana, do you have a plan for the fate of this ship?"

"Hold on Chief, I'm checking the schematics of this ship,"

She paused; John felt a sensation of memory loss and then came to.

"There is no way we will be able to blow this rig with the arsenal we have now; our dets were totaled in the crash. I suggest we…hold on…Chief, get me into one of those data ports."

The Chief switched to his assault rifle and swept the rest of the hanger, then crouched and hobbled over to the first data port he could find, and fed Cortana into the slot. His brain warmed quickly and felt her presence leave his as Cortana entered the Covenant system.

Cortana threw up her screen wall as soon as she hit the data port; she wasn't taking any chances with a Covenant AI this time around. She filtered the enemy's unimportant chatter, and cycled through her register of Covenant ship schematics she had collected, over the past few weeks, matching and rearranging her old blueprints to fit this ship's.

She felt a hail try to tackle her wall.

"Not this time," she seethed, and initiated her cyber-web, trapping the enemy AI before it had time to re-boot its punch software for another run.

Cortana deleted the entire program at once, she had no time to torture or interrogate the enemy artificial intelligence right now, and she had a job to do: finding the Chief a way to blow the cruiser.

She checked through the Covenant system re-routed a path to their life support system.

"Damn," she muttered, the entire hall was stacked with columns of Covenant soldiers. She scrubbed that Idea and held for another opportunity.

"Cortana?" she heard the Chiefs voice outside her encrypted box.

"Hold on, I'm still looking for a way, their life support room is baited,"

She traced a stray COM signal to the ship's armory. Maybe she could find enough ammunition and explosives to overload and detonate simultaneously to blow the cruiser to hell.

She found their cache, it was stacked with…some kind of new bomb that she read to have the nuclear payload of a SHIVA warhead, enough to knock an orbital platform out of orbit.

She activated the bomb without another moment's hesitation.

"Chief, get me out, and find a way out of here, _**fast**_.

John took Cortana out of the data port and crammed her back into the back of his helmet.

"There is a Covenant phantom docked on the other side of this launch bay. Hurry Chief."

John didn't need any other motivation.

The Chief ran for the drop ship and climbed in through the back. He warmed up the controls and shut all the hatches once Johnson was in. He punched the docking release, and launched the Phantom into the vacuum.

"Chief, I'm reading an inbound slipspace vector," Cortana said through his helmet's speakers.

As the Master Chief prayed that it wasn't more Covenant reinforcements, the bow of a UNSC frigate morphed into normal space.

"_This is the UNSC Frigate _In Amber Clad_ Lieutenant Miranda Keyes, responding to an E-band S.O.S. message, over."_

John heard Cortana click his COM,

"In Amber Clad, this is UNSC artificial intelligence Cortana speaking. Stay clear of the coordinates I am sending you, over."

"_Roger that, initiating docking sequence with UNSC Frigate _Gettysburg_ now, over."_

The Master Chief felt space shake around him as the cruiser behind him exploded into a million pieces.

He landed the Phantom in the hanger of the Gettysburg, and for the first time in three weeks, John got the rest he ultimately deserved.


End file.
